Heretofore, a very effective type washer or cleaning section for a paint spray booth has been developed by Binks Manufacturing Company, utilizing an air nozzle (or venturi) and water nozzle spraying one or more sheets of water across the air nozzle for removing paint particles from paint ladened air passing through the air nozzle. Such washer means are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,239,512 and 4,399,742 assigned to Binks Manufacturing Company. This style air nozzle-water nozzle washer has been installed in various downdraft booths wherin a plurality of these washer means have been located below the downdraft booth on its centerline, below and at the side of such a booth, and below the slot of a slot type booth.
While such booths are very effective and have met with considerable commercial success, they have required a high water flow through the plurality of water nozzles. For example, in a ten foot length of booth of a size to production line paint automobiles which has two water washed subfloor sides, each side of the subfloor requiring 5 gallons of water per foot of booth length per minute and four air nozzle-water nozzle washers each requiring 150 gallons per minute, the total water flow required is 700 gallons per minute. Now all this water must be treated before it can be reused or discharged so that it represents a considerable expense both in initial installation and operating costs.
As noted above, it has been known to use water type washers in paint spray booths and even washers having some form of water nozzle. For example see U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,337,983 and 3,798,880, both of which show a water nozzle in a long tube having a converging-diverging portion. U.S. Pat. No. 3,112,352 also has a long converging-diverging nozzle which aspirates water therin due to the air flow through the nozzle. Like the previous described Binks devices, the devices shown in the just above mentioned three patents also utilize a considerable quality of water.